My partner Deb, 58, and I, 69, are taking a gap year that began in January 2025. Except, we have no hard ending — we call it rotational living.
We gave up our fixed address, a rental too large and expensive for our needs, while we explore the world. We spent several weeks in São Paulo, about the same amount of time in Providence, and a few days in rural Vermont, watching spring settle into the mountains. We lived in Montreal for a month and a half this summer and depart for three months in Brazil again the first week in December. We look forward to Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East next year.
Rotational living works for us in part because we both prefer travel as though living in a new place. When one trip ends, another begins, in a different city, state, or country.
We learned a lot from our travels
We’ve learned a few things while traveling together. First, you have to truly enjoy your partner. We’re both writers and consultants, so we create work in similar ways. We’ve realized how much we rely on the predictable — the same coffee maker, clocks you don’t have to search for, all the different shoes — and how exhausting unpredictability can become.
We accommodate these challenges by going to bed early and leaving room in our days for uncertainty. These few negatives of rotational living don’t detract much from the pleasures. Not knowing lies at the core of exploration, and so we have learned to master uncertainty, embrace adventure, and love freedom.
We had talked about living this way for years. Then my mother died in the fall of 2024 after a long and glorious life. The kids — my two in their 30s, Deb’s three in their 20s — have launched, all of them in careers they trained for, and none of them have children yet. This little gap, between parenting and grandparenting, arrives like a gift. We look forward to becoming our future grandkids’ default babysitters and embracing a fixed address when that moment arrives. But in the meantime, we contemplate where to go next.
We are spending less money
Our decision also has a financial underpinning, although the professional freedom Deb and I enjoy might have led us to this choice anyway.
We lived outside Boston, in a community for people who moved there for the top-notch schools. Our large apartment cost an absurd sum compared to our needs, but nothing within a two-hour radius saved us much money. In truth, we don’t yet know where we want to live, so rather than spend thousands a year on rent for a place we don’t love, why not spend less and live everywhere?
Calculating the cost of rotational living clarified that a conventional home led to a life at the edge, whereas rotational living brought us the luxuries we most desire: learning new cultures, eating well, time with friends and family, and artistic inspiration. We started a blog called Breakfast: A Love Story to share this joy with the world.
When we visit Brazil, we can rent comfortable apartments for under $1,000 a month, pretty much whenever we want to go. The same goes for India, another destination on our list. We’re looking for an open month for Europe, where we will mostly stay with friends. Work obligations sometimes set our travel map. Just as often, we imagine places we want to experience, such as Japan and Australia. The moment we make friends in those places, we will go.
Andy Hoffman began writing professionally as a teenager and has founded several businesses, largely in educational technology. He currently lives everywhere.
